I've always fought with this when writing. I personally am not into overly descriptive books and tend to either avoid them altogether and learn to skim through and get to most of the dialogue. I find those most interesting to me because I like to read them as a conversation I'm actually witnessing. Besides, some descriptions get too detailed and call me silly but can be boring. Unfortunately that has also carried over into my writing. I won't say it's mainly dialogue but I feel as though it should be reduced. Does anybody else run into this issue? I write in the first person and wonder if what my character said could have just been a thought. Or the entire conversation could have been running through her mind instead. Looking back on my old work I see quotation marks all across the page and it now makes me cringe. I'd like to know how others feel about an excessive use of dialogue and/or how to avoid it when developing my plot. I used to be better at this actually but getting back into writing after years of years of blocks I just want to "talk" the whole time.
Do you not like it yourself, or do you just think that other people won't like it? Because on a scale of 1 to Hills Like White Elephants, I'm guessing that anything you write is going to be pretty close to the low end
It might not be that you have too much dialogue, but instead you have too little narration. Granted, there might be parts where you can't avoid lots of dialogue, and that's fine - but unless you're writing a play, there should be description too. Is there any action between all that dialogue - i.e., do the characters go places, sees things, etc., as opposed to just standing around talking to each other? If so, then tell us about it. If not, well - there's your problem.
People overuse description, in my opinion, and I end up skimming over it. a couple of sentences of description for something that genuinely needs description is fine, I think. Dialogue is fine, as long as you have some narration and a touch of description scattered amongst it to break it up. Otherwise. '...he said, ...she said' becomes a bit like watching tennis.
It depends who is writing. The Gormenghast Trilogy is a favourite of mine because of the description, but it also makes it a little impenetrable and a "hard" read (in that you have to pay attention to it rather than just flick through it like a page turner). I also once read a Barbara Cartland novel, and it was just page after page of meaningless dialogue, literally as if she were chasing a minimum word count. I like to set my dialogue against some activity or sequence of actions so I can intersperse both.
It may also depend what you're describing. There's a dodgy habit I've fallen into of giving the dialogue, and then describing the feelings that produced the dialogue, or that the dialogue produces, or whatever. Sometimes this is necessary unless you want your characters to be TOTALLY opaque, but it can definitely be overdone. Describing scenery, setting, etc.? I'd say that's a style issue. Do what you like and be prepared that nobody will like everything, ever.
That makes sense that it's not my dialogue but little narration. I suppose I could learn how to be more descriptive yet also have the conversations to even it out.
Absolutely. Perfect example. In my mind I try to come up with different words to replace "said" when really it shouldn't be about that but just rearranging the whole thing.
When you read Barbara Cartland's novel did the excessive dialogue take away from the story do you think? Or was it just a minor irritation? I'm interested in knowing what runs through people's minds when this happens. A potentially great novel could be ruined by something so small, yet so great.
A little bit of both. I want to keep the readers captivated but also enjoy writing it for myself as well.
The only thing that could detract from a Barbara Cartland novel is turning the page and finding a squashed cat turd.
